I really need to learn to deal with pressure, especially the kind I put on myself.
It’s all a scam, really. More bullshit from my depression. Something to keep me in its grips. The pressure comes and frightens and flattens me and what do you know, I end up not doing things that might help me escape this wretched existance of mine.
The video game addiction adds to the annihilation too. It’s always so tempting to play video games and escape the pressure and the shocks and horrors of reality by doing something I know will keep me content for hours at a time.
I’d be a lot better off if I kicked that habit. But I don’t feel strong enough to face all those endless empty hours without games.
Being disabled really sucks.
I’d much rather be capable and healthy and strong so that I could be out there in the world living life and growing as a person. Be a real person, with a career and a family and a husband and land.
To me, that seems like paradise, even though to the vast majority of humanity, that’s normal everyday life.
Count your blessings, folks. No matter how much you think your life sucks, there is someone out there for whom it would be Heaven.
And that’s true even of someone like me. I might be near the bottom of the ladder in modern society but there’s a billion people in the world living in extreme poverty and they would love to live indoors in a heated apartment with plenty of food and a computer and all the rest.
And as generous and self-sacrificing as I tend to be, I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to swap with them.
I can think of a few solutions to my problems with pressure :
- Learn to do things anyway. Also known as the “true grit” approach. The pressure stops being a problem if it no longer keeps me from doing things. This is definitely my long term goal.
- Stop the pressure before it is applied. AKA the “what problem?” approach. This approach has the appeal of efficiency – what could be more efficient than preventing the problem from even becoming a problem? But when you get down into the nitty gritty of it all, trying to “catch” myself before the pressure attaches to a task is like trying to catch a bullet. It all happens too fast. So while I will keep trying to do it, I doubt it will happen any time soon.
- Respond to pressure with ego. Known to its friends as the “Mister Awesome” approach. Instead of enduring or preventing the pressure, this approach responds by applying a countervaling force, namely, egotism. I am, after all, pretty freaking amazing, and if I can just remind myself of that when I am feeling powerless and small, I might just be able to power my way out of the quagmire. This could lead to my becoming an egotistical asshole, but if it leads me to being a successful egotistical asshole, I will consider that a price worth paying.
That last one is the most…. bizarre. But it seems to work for a lot of people. And I rather like the idea of dealing with pressure by sayng “Pressure? Fuck pressure. I don’t give a shit about pressure. Because I am FREAKING AMAZING. “
It’s worth trying.
More on this (or, more likely, something totally different) later.
I keep alternating between feeling sick and feeling fine and it’s driving me up and down a long series of heavily textured walls.
I know I have an infection. Warning, the following will be kinda gross.
Anyhow. I have this skin lesion that sponteneouly appeared. It is, as far as I know, my third. I have one on my right arm which has been slowly healing. I have another on the left side of my left leg, near the kneee.
And I have Number Three, which is right around the corner from Number Two, just under the knee.
And that’s the one that I only realized yesterday is definitely inflected.
It has all the signs. Hot to the touch? Check. Painful to touch? Check. Inflamed? Oh yeah. Palpation shows fluid inside? Um yeah, definitely.
So clearly I need to get my ass to the doctor and get some antibiotics for this shit. Actually, this morning, I felt so bad I was going to ask Joe to drop me off at the ER.
But then I got some sleep and felt better, so no.
Still, this really highlights how I do not take my health seriously enough. Spontaneous skin lesions are, like, bad. They are the sort of thing that should alarm me into immediately going to see my GP.
But here’s the thing. I did go to my GP with Number One. He hurriedly wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and showed me the door.
Antibiotics didn’t do jack shit. Came back when they ran out. He hurriedly wrote me the exact same prescription after declaring that it just hadn’t had a long time to work.
And this always happens to me. Sooner or later, doctors start using me to catch up to their schedule. They figure out that I am both tragically passive and someone who does not absorb new information rapidly when he’s feeling fragile, and then steamroller right over me, getting me in and out as fast as possible and barely listening to a word I say.
And even if I go in there determined not to let that happen this time, everything happens so fast that before I know it, the whole thing is over.
And let me tell you, not being taken seriously by your doctor is really depressing, especially when you are someone with serious health issues and said doctor is supposed to be your lifeline to not dying and such.
And there’s no easy solution. To fix it, I would have to go into that appointment with guns blazing and tell him he’s gonna slow down and he’s going to listen to what I have to say and he’s actually going to give my complains some serious thought instead of leaping to whatever conclusion will get me out the door fastest.
That’s not the kind of thing I want to do. But it might be what I have to do. I could get a new GP – there’s plenty in this neighborhood – but I would just end up in the same place again, sooner or later.
So if I want to solve the problem, I have to super strongly advocate for myself even though an inability to do that effectives is one of the symptoms of one of the very illnesses he’s supposedly treating me for.
I just can’t catch a fucking break.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.